The Lycosa

Right, then. I finally got tired of my noisy old Prodikeys and figured I'd like to reward myself with something...classy. Well it was a tough decision between the vanilla keyboards and gaming keyboards, and I kept asking myself...is the darned thing worth it. Now, there are undoubtedly loads of vanilla boards out there, but most were ugly, had bad layouts, combinations of both and all that rot. Basically, nothing fit.

Then I spotted the Razer Lycosa (http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-keyboards/razer-lycosa/razer-lycosa-keyboard). Damn. A decision like that would do horrible things to my nonexistent street cred. I mean, I've already got Razer stuff on my desk. Computer table. Whatever. I call it my Navi. Razer fan just didn't cut it. Then again, I never like letting street cred get in the way of what I want and what I like. I liked the layout, the shape and basically the no frills buttons. I never know what to do with a zillion macro buttons anyway, and the Tarantula just well...it had a gawdawful delete button cluster. Anyhoo, it became a grudge match between the Lycosa, Arctosa and Lycosa Mirror. The Arctosa rapidly fell out of the game because of the lack of backlighting. Only the Arctosa and Mirror were left. Now, I would've taken the Mirror except for the downright silly fact that it's just one big fingerprint magnet, and didn't have rubberized keys! The real unique selling point of the original Lycosa was the rubberized keys that felt oh so good. And, well, I heard it was a rather quiet keyboard. Lycosa it was.

I like to think of backlighting as a really nice aesthetic option. When I'm feeling like having a nice glow from my keyboard, I keep them on. When I'm sick of lights, I have something that's like Das Keyboard. Neat. Slim, low profile, small size. Neat, too. Rubberized keys...now that's something else. It's like having a keyboard version of my Lachesis. Smexy feel. Probably gona be a bitch to clean eventually, but hey...it's the feeling, man. Besides, this keyboard's really responsive. No squishy buttons here, and the thing didn't rattle as I was pounding on it.

Now for the nasty bits. I didn't like that they had the silicone nipples under the buttons integrated with the rest of the keyboard mat. That basically meant I'd have a much harder time getting each key replaced if/when they broke. I'd probably replace the keyboard before then out of its invariable morphing into sheer ugly gunkiness, but that's my pet peeve. Oh, and the keyboard's not exactly silent, but it is quieter.

Anyhoo...after shopping around a lot, I found a store that sold it at a rather lower price than the rest. Hey...it's their overheads, man. Got my new toy and I'm now happily pounding away on it. I can see its health bar going down down down already...